Recently a new review of Rule Dementia! has gone online on the blog of the Great Swifty. It's quite an eclectic blog, dealing with literature film and music, with a distinct leaning towards J-pop. The contributors are the Great Swifty himself (filmmaker Edmund Yeo (see a sample of his work here), Justin Cartaginese and May Zhee.
The review is written by Justin Cartaginese, a writer who, as the narrator of 'The Call of Cthulhu' remarks of the sculptor Wilcox, "will… some time be heard from". Sooner rather than later, I expect. You can also read many of his other reviews on the same blog. Of particular interest, I think, are the reviews of Mishima's The Sea of Fertility and Jorge Luis Borges' Labyrinths.
There is also, following the review of Rule Dementia!, an interview with me. Perhaps 'conversation' would be a better term, since I believe Justin and I share many of the same interests, and I am especially happy with the 'interview' for that reason. I'm also happy to be given a venue a little outside of the stamping ground to which I am used – of horror/fantasy. I think this is particularly gratifying to me, as I am increasingly bored and irritated by partisanship to categories of fiction or prejudice against categories. If we must have them, let's not take them too seriously, please. Only yesterday I heard tell of someone who was disappointed to learn that the book she was reading had a supernatural ending, and would apparently have been glad if the book had been labelled supernatural, because then she simply would not have read it in the first place. I sigh at such accounts and ask myself, why is she bothering to read in the first place if she's going to be so narrow-minded about it? In fact, suddenly I feel like saying, let us destroy all categories!
So, well, please enjoy the review and interview.
Q. – am I detecting a note of optimism creeping in to your narrative here? It sounds like it and I am glad about that. Only you know how many years I have tried to imbue you with that feeling and now here you are actually beginning to sound as if things are “on the up”.Please don’t let it fade – the optimism I mean.It’s very refreshing to read what seems to me to be a ‘new attitude’. I am not carping at your ‘old attitude’ – merely relieved to perceive what I think is a change.Best wishes (perhaps I should say “break a leg” if you are feeling ‘cautious/nervous’ about what is happening).
Hello Lokutus.Thanks for dropping by. Well, I have my changes of mood. I suppose I’m a little too cautious to describe myself as optimistic. But perhaps I could say that I’m currently feeling more confident than previously about the worth of my writing, or rather, about its quality, since worth depends on there being something of ultimate value in existence.Maybe even quality is the wrong word, since that seems to pander to mainstream ideas of a hierarchy of quality in writing. To some extent I concur, but I think if you care too much about notions of quality then it’s counterproductive.Perhaps I should limit myself to saying that I’m currently feeling more confident about my writing.
Hi Quenton–keep up the compression! 😀
Hello. Thank you. I shall try.
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